


Happy Not Knowing

by LighteningDancer



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Fluff and Angst, KHR summer gift exchange 2019, M/M, more angst than fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 13:10:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19888381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LighteningDancer/pseuds/LighteningDancer
Summary: But if there's something between you and meBaby, I have no time for itI'm happy not knowingAnd please don't stir it upI'm sure it's nothing but some heartburn, babyAnd I'm happy not knowing





	Happy Not Knowing

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Mocchin otherwise known as http://mofumofumuffin.tumblr.com for the KHR Summer Gift Exchange. They said they wanted angst so I tried my best (￣Д￣；；
> 
> Also I listened to Happy not knowing by Carly Rae Jepsen the entire time I was writing this so....

Most days Hayato doesn’t go to bed until long after the sun has set. As a high school senior if he was a civilian all he would be worried about is college entrance exams and the mounting homework that proceeds finals. Seeing as he’s NOT a civilian and has a definite future set up for him already as a member of the Vongola family, on top of that the position of tenths Tsuna’s right hand man, his thoughts are less on what happens at graduation and more to getting there alive.

It’s no secret to anyone, mafia or not, at this point that things seem to go haywire around the Vongola, specifically the tenth generation that he’s a part of. Townspeople in Namimori ask him all the time about the recent “fireworks shows” outside of his apartment and if he was caught up in that “freak zoo animal escape / destruction of the block near the old factories / day when the forest seemed to be on fire but was alright the next day”. He still doesn’t know what makes people think they can just ASK him this shit when he has better things to do then answer them but he attributes it to the fact that he has been there so many years and they are no longer threatened by his barbs saying that he will kick their collective asses.

He could if he wanted to, don’t get him wrong, but Tsuna has enough on his plate without Hayato adding anything else to it. Hell there had been three, count ‘em THREE, assassination attempts on Tsuna in the past week! Plus Reborn had started adding paperwork to Tsuna’s daily routine last month. Not to mention just the normal crazy, see above, that happens around the Vongola. Which is why Hayato has been trying his best to keep everything, aka himself, under control as much as possible.

So how is it one in the morning and he’s on the phone with Tsuna not talking about their graduation and move to Italy in only two months, or any of the recent attacks, or even the school work they don’t really HAVE to do but Reborn FORCES on them? And how is it that they are talking about Yamamoto of all people?!

Over the years Hayato admits that it has been harder and harder to be mad at the other guardian. Mainly because the other always seems to somehow magically pull through and aid either Hayato himself or the others. When you fight side by side for so many years, and come to learn to trust your life in someone else’s hands, it’s hard to hate those same hands. This DOES NOT mean that they are IN LOVE and SECRETLY DATING, no matter what Tsuna is laying out on the other line.

“You seriously don’t think I see it? You’re not subtle all the time!” Tsuna questions, his voice low enough not to be heard by the other people sleeping in his house but firm all the same.

“Tsuna, we both know I don’t like telling you that you’re wrong, but you’re wrong. W-r-o-n-g.” He replies throwing an arm over his eyes. “I don’t hate him anymore but that doesn’t mean that we are secretly dating behind your back.”

“But Haru said-”

“That woman again!?”

“But Haru said she saw you two leaving the batting cages the other day when I was on that phone conference with Gramps. And you guys never used to hang out on your own, so that’s a big thing! Not to mention that you actually offered, offered, to help him study for his exams when he brought them up after class today. You’ve never done that before either! So it just seems like….” he trails off leaving ample time for Hayato to reply.

“Yeah, we went to the batting cages cause he said that even after not playing on a team for three years he could still out bat me. He also offered loser treats winner to dinner. So of course I wanted to get a free meal out of it! You know how good that his dad’s sushi is! And the homework thing-”

“Did you win?” Tsuna interjects.

Hayato has a hard time letting the “no” out of his mouth. It’s not that he’s embarrassed by losing, it’s he’s very embarrassed by losing. 

“So you two went out and did an activity and then had a meal afterwards?” He continued, a lilt to his voice Hayato hates on pure instinct even though he can’t place it exactly. It just sounds like Reborn, which makes his hair stand on edge.

“Yeah but I don’t know what that has to do with-” he begins, defensive for a reason he can’t understand, when Tsuna pipes in.

“Like a date?” Hayato lurches up and forward in bed, his hand almost crushing the phone in his hand. 

Oh.

OH.

Oh fuck.

“Tsuna!” Hayato yelps knowing he’s really screwed up now. He has given Tsuna a bone and the other isn’t going to let it go. “It’s not like that! It’s not a date if I say it’s not a date and so it wasn’t a date because I say so.”

He feels the grin in Tsuna’s voice when he says, “You know I just want you to both be happy right? So if you wanted to date him I would support you.”

Hatayo blames Reborn. He really, really, does. 

He spends the next fifteen minutes convincing the other boy that he DOES NOT have any feelings for Yamamoto. That he literally is just friends with the other and that Tsuna should be happy that they got to that point with how much Hayato used to hate him. And when the phone call ends he immediately buries his head in his hands and groans louder and longer than he ever has in his entire life. If he were a lesser man he may have even kicked his feet against the comforter like a child throwing a tantrum. But he’s not a child throwing a tantrum, he’s an 18 year old gown adult man with a crush on his fellow guardian, which is somehow a million times harder to deal with. 

See Hayato can rationalize and explain a lot of the things in his life. Not all of them, he deals with flames born from people's wills not to die on a daily basis, but a lot. So now that he can’t rationalize his own feelings it pisses him off as much as it makes him happy. Since when did it matter where Yamamoto went and who he went there with? When did it start to bother him that he gets confession letters in his shoe locker at least once a week? WHY does it bother him when he knows full well that the other isn’t interested in dating ANYONE right now? And he knows that last helpful bit of information because the other full on told him he wasn’t interested in girls at the moment when they were on that so called “date” Tsuna mentioned last week. 

His feelings for Yamamoto don’t even have an outline, no start or finish or clearly defined features. It’s just this big ball of feelings in the back of his head that sounds something like a key smash every time he sees or even thinks about him. It makes his palms so sweaty and he itches to grab for a cigarette. And Hayato is fine with this for the most part. It’s all a part of having a crush according to the deep online diving he really didn’t do and will deny to his dying day. As long as he can keep that part of him under control, and convince Tsuna and everyone else that it doesn’t exist, nothing has to change.

Which is kind of the whole point really. 

Hayato doesn’t want anything to change. 

It feels like he’s finally found a home, a family, that he can keep for the rest of his life. A place where he can be himself and people don’t judge him by his odd habits or slightly out there hobbies. Every single one of them has their own quirks but they all fit together somehow, sometimes in ways that he would have never expected.

He’s not willing, or ready, to risk a broken heart when it’s already so full to bursting already. How could he possibly think to tarnish what he already has? 

He doesn’t need more. He doesn’t need to be selfish. He’s prepared to be happy not knowing the press of the others lips for the first time, or the second, or the third. Hayato has contented himself with never being able to hold Yamamoto’s hand with their fingers intertwined. Made peace with the fact that he will never have any say in the other’s romantic entanglements, and eventually he assumes, the others choice of a wife. He has lived without it all of his life already, and it won’t kill him not to have it, so it can’t be worth risking all that he has.

Friendship has to be enough, and it is enough.

He does not go to sleep at all.

* * *

Takeshi is on the other side of town having the exact OPPOSITE problem; trying to figure out how to confess his feelings without coming off as totally head over heels as he is. He knows that he can be a bit much sometimes, not Ryohei levels mind you, but still more than he knows Gokudera has ever had. The last thing Takeshi wants is to scare Gokudera off before they can even start anything.

To be honest he’s mostly confused that Gokudera hasn’t brought it up with how obvious he’s been. The only thing he can think of is that he’s trying not to bring it up in order to spare Takeshi’s feelings. BUT even if that is the case Takeshi can’t just spend the rest of his life in limbo like this, not knowing if the other knows FOR SURE that Takeshi likes him and if he does or doesn’t like him back FOR SURE.

Planning things out like this really sucks though. Normally he would go to the others about this but it’s Gokudera that he’s crushing on. It’s one of them. A member of their group. It just feels wrong for Takeshi to go to the others for advice, like somehow he would be earning an unfair advantage? He doesn’t know why it feels that way, just that it does, so he doesn’t dwell on it and just absolves himself further not to think of it. 

He does know that he has to do it soon because he has literally almost blurted out like 20 compliments to the other boy in the past however many days and it’s getting out of hand. If Takeshi doesn’t get a plan together soon it’s going to come out on accident, which is the worst way for it to happen. He can just imagine how badly that situation could end so he won’t, can’t, let that happen.

Tomorrow, he promises himself, I’ll figure this out tonight and tell him tomorrow.

* * *

Suddenly Hayato feels really bad for Tsuna. 

Getting shot hurts like a mother fucker, and this isn’t even a dying will bullet pointblank headshot. 

As it turns out the three assassins earlier that week weren’t really top ranking members of their organization. Instead they were more like low level grunts, sent out to find out their daily schedules, so they could report to the big boss who would then come out when the timing was perfect.

Who would have guessed that the weakest point of time for a bunch of guys in highschool would be the ass crack of dawn when they were forced to get up and go to school still half in zombie mode? 

Hayato. Hayato would have guessed that. At least he should have, would have, if he hadn’t been constantly agonizing over a certain amber eyed man which in turn caused him to forego sleep. 

Long story short more weaklings came and tried to ambush them and they were taken out with rapid efficiency so ingrained into his bones not even exhaustion could have stopped him. Then the middle level grunts came and Hayato started to lag a bit. Luckily he wasn’t alone and for the most part he was uninjured by that second round as well. Then round three started, the enemy boss arrived, and it was only instinct that kept him alive and on his feet.

Until it didn’t.

Until his eyes saw the bullet coming but was too slow to fully react. 

Until he used all of his energy to move a little, just a little damnit move that much, to the right so it wasn’t his heart that was directly hit. 

Until pain exploded throughout his chest much like the very bombs he wielded as he collapsed weightless onto his back on the ground. He tried to raise his hand to his chest in order to light his sun flame, which while weak would have been SOMETHING. But he was weak, exhausted. They had been herded far from Namimori proper and had been fighting for hours. His flames were depleted and his muscles more worried about relaxing then following his goddamned orders. 

Did you know dying isn’t like it is in the movies? You don’t just collapse and then close your eyes moments later to be free from the pain. 

Other than an initial moment of white noise exploding in his ears Hayato can still hear everything fine. There is a gut wrenching roar of his name coming from somewhere he thinks is to his left. He can’t tell who it is though as none of them have ever made a sound quite like that in a long time, at least since their voices had matured even further. He could hear a few others echoing the call and the calm and calculated laughter of the other’s boss as the field fell silent. The asshole began to speak in a low voice that kept him from hearing much of it.

“....Weakness…. The great Vongola…. Nothing more than pretenders ...”

Followed by the sharp smack of fist meeting nose and breaking cartilage. Then the cacophonous sounds of battle began again.

Laying there unable to move, no doubt due to blood loss, his inability to breathe well, and flame exhaustion, Hayato suddenly has all the time in the world to think. Or maybe it was that his mind is moving a mile a minute, trying to get each last thought in before he breathed his last.

His mind drifts to his first days in this strange town that would only get stranger. Of Tsuna, his boss. His friend. His brother. The first person to ever look at him in years and actually make him feel like he was worth something. That if he died it would be a shame and not because his father lost an heir or a gang or family lost an informant, but because he, Hayato Gokudera, would be gone. 

But just because he was the first to make him feel that way did not mean that Hayato could ignore the fact that everyone else in their family felt the same. And he felt that way about them. Losing any of them would have been a loss he doesn’t know if he could survive in one piece. In that way it is almost calming to know that he is the one that is hurt, that is bleeding out into this cold unforgiving earth, and not anyone that he is terrified of losing.

And thinking of terrified his brain jumps immediately to Yamamoto and how much of a fucking idiot he’s been. So what if he confessed and the other boy turned him down? Yamamoto gives as much shits about his friends, about him, as all of them. He wouldn’t have allowed a stupid shitty crush drive them apart. He would have been gentle, more gentle then he probably ever had to be, and he would apologize for not liking Hayato back like the idiot he is. No one should apologize for not liking someone else. And then Yamamoto would have insisted things go back to normal and they would have, eventually.

Liking Yamamoto, and telling him, didn’t need to be the end of the world. But this might. 

He tries one last time to raise his hand, to attempt to save himself when suddenly his vision, which he hadn’t even noticed had gone blurry is filled by someone. Though his eyes are glassy and he can’t tell if it’s from tears or because he’s really about to die, he knows who is above him. 

He hasn’t seen her smile in so, so long. 

Then his eyes close and he thinks no more.

* * *

Let’s make one thing clear; Hayato had no inclination that he was going to wake back up. Ever. So when consciousness slowly bleeds back into him the first thing he feels is grateful. Grateful he didn’t have to leave yet. Grateful that he gets to spend another day here, with everyone that he cares about. But that’s only the first thing he feels.

Next comes a low rolling headache and tiredness that in any other circumstance could have been attributed to too many all nighters and energy drinks. It makes him hesitate in opening his eyes, not ready for the harsh light he can already discern from behind his eyelids. Instead he scrunches basically every muscle in his face tighter, and tighter, as if that could stop the low throb and wait is that..? Yeah that’s definitely mounting nausea from out of ab-so-fucking-lutely nowhere. 

After what seems like hours, but could have been seconds or minutes or hell maybe it WAS hours, he slowly opens his eyes. It’s bright like he thought and not from natural light but bright fluorescent bulbs that hang above him. His head is tilted to the left already and his gaze meets only a closed window curtain in a place that is definitely a hospital room. Taking a deep breath to steady himself Hayato rolls his head in the other direction, hoping that there may at least be a call button to get some more medication, and his friends, in here.

What he sees is Yamamoto sleeping in the most uncomfortable position Hayato could ever imagine not even a foot away. His first reaction is to think; why the fuck did he not realize I was awake, are his skills that lax?! His second reaction stops before it’s even taken (he would have yelled at him for falling asleep while on watch) as he notices the bags under the other’s eyes, darker and more bruise like then he’s ever seen them before. There is also a fine line of stubble that before this moment Hayato hadn’t even been sure could form on the other’s boyish face. He can also take stock of the sword just inches away from where his hand trails over the side of one of the chairs arms. 

So instead of screaming he takes that moment and really takes the other in and what it means for him to be here and look like this, like he hadn’t been home or taken care of himself in days. What it means for how much Yamamoto cares about him, as a person and a friend. And as some of his last thoughts before he passed out come back to him, he knows that he was right, that this is Yamamoto and no matter what he will stand by his side always and through all things. 

In a moment, he tells himself as his gaze never wavers but lingers on the others form. In a moment I’ll wake him up. But now, this little moment in between what is and what could be, is entirely his.


End file.
